GARY WEGLARZ: The key institutions of Western societies have lost
their credibility. They fail to merit either the respect or loyalty of
the domestic populations they purport to serve.

Testing the
validity of this assertion requires examination of Western institutions
from a holistic rather than fragmentary perspective. This is easier said
than done.

There exists a massive amount of near real-time web based information available for us to process daily if we are attempting
to keep abreast of world events. This often leaves us diligently
evaluating recent events, while lacking the opportunity to step back and
assemble these discrete events into a more comprehensible whole.